If more minorities are arrested for smoking pot it must be racism

Minorities continue to take the brunt of NYPD pot arrests despite a massive drop in busts.

In all, 89% of all New Yorkers arrested for smoking marijuana last year through Nov. 23 were either black or Hispanic, while just 7% were white, according to figures posted by the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice.

“People of color are over-policed and disproportionately brought into the criminal justice system for low-level offenses,” City Councilman Rory Lancman, a frequent critic of the de Blasio administration’s handling of criminal justice reforms, said Monday.

Overall, the number of marijuana arrests as of Nov. 23 plummeted to 7,348 from 17,121 in 2017, records show.

The de Blasio administration says it needs more time to reduce the racial disparity.

“This administration has taken a dead aim at disparity by dramatically reducing marijuana arrests, and developing a plan for legalization that aims to right historic wrongs,” said mayoral spokeswoman Olivia Lapeyrolerie. “But it’s naïve to think that an issue as old and complex as this can be unraveled and solved by the snap of anyone’s fingers.”

The problem will persist for years, she predicted.

“It’ll be a challenge that this administration, the next administration and those who follow will have to constantly focus on — and we will continue to do so,” she said.

In the summer, Mayor de Blasio predicted the city’s new marijuana enforcement policy would help reduce the historic racial disparity.

“The highest form of reducing disparity is to reduce the overall number of arrests,” de Blasio told reporters on Aug. 30. “And that’s what we’ve proceeded to do. But we believe we can do all that while continuing to deepen public safety.”

Lancman, and other criminal justice reformers, contend the city should do more to protect minorities. He pointed out that under the new NYPD policy put in place Sept. 1, anyone caught smoking in public gets a summons rather than an arrest.

But people wanted for a crime, on parole or probation, or with a prior arrest for violent crime are still arrested. Other exceptions include if the person is caught smoking while driving a car, is seated in the driver’s seat of a motor vehicle or unable to verify his ID or address.

“We’ve created a world where a stunning number of people of color have some criminal justice involvement,” he said. “The pool of people who are going to get arrested are more heavily black and Latino to begin with.”

He also blamed police tactics.

“We are policing marijuana use in communities of color more aggressively than we are in white communities,” he said. “That has not changed.”

“Whether it was stop and frisk or broken windows policing or marijuana policing…there’s this need on the part of law enforcement to reach into the lives of brown and black people as a means of social control and law enforcement strategy,” Lancman said.

The NYPD has long maintained that officers respond to complaints and crimes without any racial bias.

Cops started to cut back on arrests nearly four years ago by issuing summonses to anyone found to be in possession of less than 25 grams of marijuana — worth about $250 to $300 in New York City.

With Graham Rayman

___

(c)2019 New York Daily News

Visit New York Daily News at www.nydailynews.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

—-

This content is published through a licensing agreement with Acquire Media using its NewsEdge technology.

8 Comments

It is pure “Liberal” nonsense to claim that racial disparity in the number of criminal arrests is a result of “racism” or similar manipulation.

The fallacious “logic” (a.k.a. sophistry) behind this “Liberal” nonsense can be explained on this example.

First, they claim that racism is wrong. Then they claim that higher incarceration rate among some minorities reflects their higher propensity to lawbreaking is an instance of racism. From that they conclude that the (obviously true) claim that the said minorities are more likely to break the law is false. Which, in turn, they use as a proof of racial discrimination by law enforcement against the minorities.

I hope you see how absurd the above inference is.

What the authorities are really trying to accomplish is to shield their protected (privileged is a more adequate descriptor here) minorities so they not only consume more than they contribute to the society, but are also shielded from the consequences of their wrong choices, lawbreaking is an example of.

The next step is easy to predict by looking at the history of Marxism in Soviet Union and vicinity. They will try to impose on us a dictatorship of minorities in order to protect these minorities from racial discrimination. And you are not going to like it when it does happen.

Correction: First, they claim that racism is wrong. Then they declare the claim that higher incarceration rate among some minorities reflects their higher propensity to lawbreaking an instance of racism. From that they conclude that the (obviously true) claim that the said minorities are more likely to break the law is false. Which, in turn, they use as a proof of racial discrimination by law enforcement against the minorities.

Read between the lines of what mayor deblasio said: the nypd will not arrest any minority for any marijuana crime again. That would level out the arrest percentage of minority versus whites to zero (0).

Recent Comments

"Dictate by tantrum. Trump is hundreds of times more mature than Obama was during his shutdown theatre. Remember when Obama DECIDED to shut down national parks, and then hired armed guards to keep veterans out? He was trying to inflict as much pain as possible.
With the profound lack of maturity exhibited on the Left, it's a wonder they can work..."Comment by DrGadget
Posted in Somebody got their widdle feelings hurt

"So true.
When unelected govt pencil pushers come up with stupid new regulations, real companies go out of business. Where's the outrage against the oppressive regime then? Where are the tears for the little guy just trying to do his job?
But if a govt employee in one of the hundreds of alphabet soup departments loses his job, or not even that..."Comment by DrGadget
Posted in That Long Winter at Valley Shutdown